Smart Government

Total U.S. federal government spending on cloud solutions? It's growing even faster than the government itself predicted.A year ago, as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was preparing the federal Fiscal Year 2014 IT Budget, agency CIOs predicted that feds would spend a total of about $2.2 billion on cloud. But now, that the preliminary FY 2015 IT budget has been set, it looks like agencies actually will spend over $3 billion on cloud. That's a difference of nearly $800 million.

The boost in cloud spending does not necessarily mean agencies are going "over budget" for cloud spending. In fact, the increase is more a factor of IT planners realizing they can do some things cheaper in the cloud, and electing to redirect some of their IT dollars there in order to spark long-term savings.

Some large cloud projects did help tip the scale. For example, the largest single government cloud project, which was put in place to address some of the Social Security Administration's…

Big Data may be an overhyped buzz word today, with recent provocative headlines about Big Data from advancing human Genome research to find specific markers for cancer or genetic diseases, to Big Data analytics raising big privacy questions, as well as the problems of our digital footprint haunting us forever. However one recent headline gave me pause, as it asked the hypothetical question of whether Big Data could have prevented the recent Fort Hood shootings.

Many government entities are increasingly using Big Data analytics for decision making and solving some of their toughest problems. One such Big Data program was started with seed funding from DOD's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), a project that analyzes communications from Veterans who have opted in. The purpose of this program, theDurkheim Project, named after Emile Durkheim, a sociologist whose 1897 publication of "Suicide" provided an early text analysis for suicide risk,…

Big data and analytics, especially when combined with the level of personalization allowed by mobile computing and wearable devices, and with the power of sensors and actuators that enable machines to react to events and make choices on behalf of individuals even if those individuals are not aware, is raising puzzling ethical questions.

I must confess, I am not a big fan of science fiction. Not of that series of movies that talks about wars in space, or of that TV series that tell tales of a ship navigating through galaxies. But I have read a few things; for instance I am fascinated by the writings of 20th century geniuses, like George Orwell and Ray Bradbury. Also I should qualify myself as not being particularly concerned about my privacy in the virtual world. I use many social networks and I am happy with the level of…